from the dig-your-own-grave dept

If you still watch traditional TV chances are you've increasingly been accosted with blacked out content and annoying ticker warnings as cable operators and broadcasters bicker over programming contracts. Whether it's Fox News's ugly fight with Dish, DirecTV's feud with The Weather Channel, or the Cablevision - News Corporation fight that blacked out the World Series a few years back, these obnoxious disputes have only gotten uglier over the last few years as programming costs have soared and the cable and broadcast industry works tirelessly to ensure its looming irrelevance.

For the consumer, these fights usually go something like this: you're bombarded with on-screen tickers and ads from both your cable operator and the broadcaster telling you the other guy is being a greedy villain during a contract standoff. After the programming contract expires, content you're paying for gets blacked out (which you're of course never given a refund for) by one side or the other in the hopes of pushing negotiations along. After a month or two the two sides then ultimately strike a confidential new programming deal. A few weeks later your cable bill sees a price hike -- potentially your second of the year.

It's kind of a lose-lose scenario for consumers, who get used as public relations pinatas (call your cable operator to complain!), lose access to content they're paying for, and then get accosted with an endless series of rate hikes. For the last few years, the FCC has generally had a hands off approach to these disputes (boys will be boys, and all that), but as they've gotten uglier and consumers have increasingly been railroaded, pressure has mounted for the regulator to at least do something. According to a new blog post by FCC boss Tom Wheeler, the FCC head says he's looking at a number of ideas that could help ease the pain of these idiotic standoffs. Maybe.

One, the FCC is considering lifting rules that prohibit cable companies from simply piping in another region's local broadcast affiliate, allowing them to at least provide customers with some version of ABC, NBC, Fox or CBS while negotiations continue. The agency also suggests it's going to look more closely at the very definition of "good faith negotiations," since these blackouts make it clear there's not much of that actually going on:

"The NPRM currently before the Commission undertakes a robust examination of practices used by parties in retransmission consent negotiations, as required by Congress. The goal of the proposed rulemaking is to ensure that these negotiations are conducted fairly and in a way that protects consumers."

Since these are private business contracts, the FCC injecting itself into these negotiations is going to piss off free marketeers and the cable and broadcast industry to no end, but the industry brought it upon itself by behaving like absolute jackasses for the last few years. Not only have they consistently held traditional TV customers hostage, some broadcasters have even blocked access to online content in petulant responses to contract feuds.

In its fight with Cablevision in 2010, News Corporation went so far as to get Hulu to block Cablevision broadband customers from accessing all Fox content. Viacom did something similar in 2014 when it blocked all CableONE broadband customers from accessing Viacom content online, even if those broadband users were paying for TV from another provider. Let that sink in a little bit: you pay for Viacom content through, say, DirecTV, but you can't access that content through your broadband provider because the cable arm of your ISP is engaged in a TV content contract dispute.

And while broadcasters do deserve the lion's share of the blame for soaring programming rates, the cable providers aren't faultless since they're quick to impose rate hikes of their own (modem fees, broadcast TV fees, set top rental charges, charges to pay over the phone) as often as possible. Layer this lost content and annoyance on to existing high prices and the industry's absolutely legendary reputation for atrocious customer service, and you've uncovered the industry's ingenious plan to more efficiently dig its own grave on the eve of the cord cutting revolution.

from the stop-it dept

Every one of us has already had this fight at some point: Apple or Android? The two dominant players in the mobile space carry with them very loyal fanbases who, for some reason, like to spar off with one another over whose tech-daddy could beat up the other. The companies compete with the same level of petty at times, which doesn't help. Apple screws around with text messages from Android users, Android pokes back at Apple over the controlling hand it has in its app store, and the two companies spend a great deal of time in legal battles because of course they do. C'mon, guys, can't we all just spend our time pointing and laughing at Windows Mobile?

Tulsa’s Channel 8 reports that police were called to a local apartment complex at around 1:00am on the morning of April 17 to investigate at least one report of a bloody person wandering around the parking lot. According to the Tulsa World, police found roommates Jiro Mendez and Elias Ecevo each in some distress—Mendez was the man in the parking lot and was covered in scratches and wounds, while Ecevo, similarly wounded, apparently had stayed inside their apartment.

The World indicates that Mendez told police that the wounds resulted from an argument between the roommates, which started over which roommate had the better smartphone—Apple or Android—and ended with both roommates allegedly stabbing each other with broken glass bottles, and Ecevo allegedly stealing Mendez’s car (police found the car near the apartment, with blood in the interior). Perhaps unsurprisingly, alcohol appears to have been a factor in the fight.

Yeah, no kidding. I have my brand loyalty, too, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel so offended at a roommate's opinion of my phone that I felt I had to avenge the inanimate object by getting all stabby. Both men ended up getting arrested and were sent to the hospital to have their wounds treated. In a perfect world, they would be laid up next to each other, Instagram-selfying from their beds with comments about how awesome the pictures from their respective phones looked.

Either way, I'm guessing there might be changes to their lease coming shortly.

from the everybody-loses dept

We've already noted how the retransmission fee disputes between cable companies and broadcasters have grown significantly more annoying over the last few years, as broadcasters seek out higher and higher rates to prop up the unsustainable current TV ecosystem. These fights have become a master class in how to piss off your (already quite annoyed) customer base during rate negotiations, with paying TV customers being bombarded with ads, TV tickers, and a bevy of lame websites by both sides trying to direct consumer outrage toward the other guy. Customers who happen to get broadband from a TV company engaged in one of these fights have also recently started to enjoy having access to online content blocked, even if they subscribe to TV services through another operator.

While broadcasters (especially sports programmers) own the lion's share of the blame for the soaring rates, neither side is blameless. Cable operators will blame broadcasters with one breath, and in the very next hit consumers with their own assortment of higher cable modem rental fees, more expensive DVR and set top rental charges, or strange and obnoxious new below the line fees. Once both sides spend a few months publicly sniping at one another and bombarding consumers with artificial concern for soaring prices, they'll strike a confidential agreement and quite happily raise consumer rates in unison. Cable TV customers get to pay for the honor of the entire experience.

AMC has recently ramped up their use of this tactic, blasting consumers with tickers and ads not only after contract negotiations break down, but months before current contracts expire. AMC repeatedly warned viewers of the latest "The Walking Dead" episode that DirecTV wasn't bowing quite deeply enough during efforts to renew a contract expiring at year's end, and therefore consumers might lose access to their favorite content:

During the Nov. 2 premiere episode of The Walking Dead, AMC began alerting DirecTV subscribers via commercials and graphic snipes that their ability to watch cable's top series, and TV's leader among persons 18 to 49, could be compromised..."DirecTV has not engaged in meaningful negotiations with us, which leaves us to doubt whether a timely renewal is possible," (a statement declares).

Because bothering you at home during your favorite shows isn't enough, Viacom recently got the great idea to take their feud with small cable operator Suddenlink on the road, hiring actors dressed up as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to help educate kids and parents during a Charleston-area homecoming celebration:

Viacom has enlisted Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to help reunite Suddenlink customers with some of the characters they might be missing since losing access to Viacom channels in early October. The turtles were scheduled to make an appearance at Capital High School’s homecoming game Friday night at University of Charleston Stadium. The move, Viacom spokesman Mark Jafar said, is intended to let area customers know the company is still thinking of them.

Of course this attempt to generate consumer outrage on the part of broadcasters only works if consumers actually miss your content, something that's only going to happen less as alternatives to cable expand. When DirecTV customers recently lost access to The Weather Channel during a contract dispute, it turned out that customers really didn't miss the channel all that much because the channel's quality had eroded substantially and many users had already shifted to getting their weather online. It's also worth noting that some small and mid-sized cable operators, unable to afford these endless rate hikess, are no longer offering cable TV and simply selling broadband.

Cable company executives spend a lot of time publicly wondering why younger cord cutters can't seem to see the incredible value in traditional cable television, oblivious to the fact that annoying paying customers goes a long way to explaining it. These are the same companies and executives who in a few years will stare dumbly at their shoes wondering how they failed to keep pace with evolution in Internet-based television, and these increasingly annoying and loud contract disputes are the last, sad gasps of a dying dinosaur.

from the why-can't-we-all-just-get-along dept

There's been a bit of a kerfuffle going on between the news aggregator Newser and entertainment news site TheWrap. Newser summarizes news that it aggregates, and apparently, TheWrap was not happy with this practice. TheWrap's Sharon Waxman posted a biting criticism of Newser, to which Newser's Michael Wolff replied with his own volley filled with barbed snark. This then kicked off a vicious fight over Twitter, which was joined by folks from all over the media industry. Finally, TheWrap took it up a notch and sent Newser a formal Cease & Desist, requesting that Newser stop using TheWrap as a source (via Mediagazer).
The C&D letter claims:

Newser's conduct violates The Wrap's rights because: (1) The Wrap generates and
gathers time-sensitive information at a cost, including, without limitation, original stories
ferreted out and reported by The Wrap's full-time employees and paid contributors; (2) Newser
free-rides on The Wrap's sweat of the brow by publishing summaries of these stories without
affording The Wrap appropriate credit and a prominent link; and (3) Newser is in direct
competition with The Wrap. Thus, Newser's conduct, in addition to amounting to garden variety
plagiarism, constitutes unfair competition and violates certain deceptive trade practices statutes.

There are a few major problems with this -- in that of the three rights that TheWrap claims Newser violates, it's not clear that any are actually rights that TheWrap has! The first one is basically an attempt to bring back the hot news doctrine, which is hotly contested these days -- but would be a huge mistake for news publications. Right now, it's still a pretty big question though as to whether or not hot news actually can be applied in this way. Just because TheWrap generates time-sensitive info, it doesn't mean that others can't do anything with it. And that's because the second "right" has been totally rejected by the courts. The claim that this is free riding on The Wrap's "sweat of the brow" is meaningless, because as the courts decided in the Feist case, there is no protection for "sweat of the brow" works. Bringing it up makes no sense, and suggests someone's making a legal argument that has long since been debunked. Finally, the fact that the two sites are in competition is meaningless. Competition is allowed. It's called capitalism. And TheWrap is exaggerating and wrong to call this plagiarism. Rewriting something may be obnoxious, but it's not plagiarism, nor is it a deceptive trade practice.

So, while Newser might be doing something that many consider slimy or tacky, it's not technically doing anything illegal. That said, the fact that TheWrap thought it was necessary to draft a formal C&D seems a tad excessive, although I'm sure the lawyers involved were more than happy to help -- even if the legal arguments appear weak. However, if Newser were to comply (and it doesn't have to), TheWrap really hurts itself more than anything. Sure, Waxman claims that in the 14 months that TheWrap has been around, Newser has sent it only 1,600 users. But, that's 1,600 more users than it would have sent had it not used TheWrap as a source. And yes, while it's true that Newser does not seem to add its own spin to the articles it summarizes, perhaps that is all that the Newser user wants. After all, the experience on Newser is very different from the one on TheWrap, so each site most likely appeals to a different type of audience. If anything, Newser exposes TheWrap content to a user segment that would not have seen TheWrap otherwise.

That said, I personally find the Newser user experience annoying and obnoxious -- the site design and link practices don't make for a good news consuming experience -- and certainly don't make for a very friendly neighbor online. Despite Newser's claims that it links to its sources, it does so in a very unfriendly way (hard to find, forcing you to visit ads to leave the page). This sort of practice, even if legal, may lead to two results, neither of which are good for Newser: (1) Annoying its readers, leaving them to go elsewhere and (2) Annoying everyone else online, keeping them out of wider social media circles. They might not think this is a big deal, but if no one else is ever linking to Newser, it's not likely that Newser stays in business. Rather than complaining, perhaps TheWrap should have just watched as Newser crumbled.

Either way, we're likely to see more fights like this one, as newspaper publishers who overvalue their own work continue with their misguided clamoring for the "hot news" doctrine, which would treat "hot news" as protected property. Not only is this a bad idea for all of society, this would ultimately spell doom for the publishers themselves, who would undoubtedly be mired in trying to figure out who owned what news rather than focusing on reporting and analyzing and figuring out how to give their customers a true reason to buy.

On that note, it's worth noting (with amusement) that the news story that kicked off this whole brouhaha was the story about how Beyonce's Label was blocking her YouTube channel. Which, of course, we here at Techdirt had written about two days before either Waxman or Newser posted on it.

But you don't see us complaining... even as we wipe the sweat off our brow.

from the it's-too-bad-this-is-news... dept

It's somewhat unfortunate that it is comment-worthy when a high school does not overreact and does not blame camera phones and YouTube for a school fight getting publicized on YouTube. Usually we see stories where school administrators, law enforcement or politicians assume that, because the video is on YouTube, it will encourage more infractions, and then they take out their anger on YouTube. They never seem willing to admit that by putting these videos on YouTube, it actually makes it easier to catch and punish those responsible. That's why it's so amazing to see this story, sent in by reader William Jackson, about a school that notes it's using the video of a fight to track down and punish those responsible and the principal, Dan Durbin, doesn't blame YouTube for this at all:

"This should remind our students that they're not going to get away with anything. If you try something like this, you're going to be seen on a security camera or on someone's cell phone.... The evidence of this makes our jobs easier because I don't have to go get it from a student. Sometimes things happen that we don't know about until well after the fact."

Even more impressive? He even seems to think that perhaps the school should rethink it's no-mobile-phones policy in light of this:

"We may need to embrace this technology in some capacity. Our students aren't going to keep their cell phones hidden away at all time. So I've asked our staff to think about what is the appropriate time to be using some of this technology. When we have something that happens at our school and a student captures it on their cell phone, we can't blame the technology. We have to look at what's going and what caused that to happen."

The local Police Chief, Matt Clancy, seems to feel the same way as well:

"It's a great tool for us. You've got it on video, and you can identify the person and see what they're doing. There's lots of video of amateur fights and street fights on YouTube. But will seeing that encourage someone to be violent any more than a television show or a movie? I don't know."

Yes, this all looks like common sense... but it's so uncommon these days that it's actually worth pointing out.